Moon in the Sky

Joseph Gordon Levitt looked up at the full moon and felt the bloodlust come to him, so familiar, so hated, so insidiously seductive. He remembered the joy he’d felt when he landed his first role in the background of Beethoven. He remembered landing his first lead role as Gregory in Switching Parents. He remembered the triumph that was landing the role of Roger in Angels in the Outfield, a triumph that too soon had turned to horror. And yet, once a month, that horror turned into a yearning. A yearning for tendons between his teeth and a blood coated gullet.

He let out a scream of fury as the hairs began to sprout all over his body. “YEAAAAAARRRGGHHHHH!” A thick downy coat shot out from his spine and spread to the rest of his back. He felt his muscles bulge beneath his shin length cargo shorts. His Vans, which were loosely laced but untied, buckled around his swelling feet and claws extended through the familiar holes in the front of each podiatric vessel. His Billabong shirt, normally baggy around his narrow shoulders, conformed to his swelling muscles, converting his relaxed Tony Hawk look into more of a Super Hairy Nick Lachey. His long, nut brown bangs frizzed up into a mane of unmanageable were-hair.

Joseph Gordon Levitt stretched out his wolf-muscles and hopped on his skateboard, the silver one with the serrated edges. He grew used to his superhuman hunger, fought the animalistic impulses down. His hunger still burned, and in the morning a few household pets might be missing, but he would be able to avoid eating any innocents tonight. With a few deft pushes from his super-human wolf-muscles he was blasting down the streets of San Francisco towards his target. He felt the cold night air caress his fur and felt the fog form a slipstream around his body. Forty, fifty, even sixty miles per hour – his strength and agility put no limits on his skateboarding prowess in wolf-form. Minutes later, he saw a huddled canine form beneath a street light. He deftly pressed the back of his skateboard to the pavement, and with a shower of sparks he skidded to a stop.

John Lithgow stood huddled over a haunch of some unidentified meat, his mouth spattered with blood. He looked up, his eyes darting back and forth with a mixture of fear and aggression. “JOSEPH...GORDON...LEVITT....” he growled. “I see you’ve returned to me. I would have though you would be done with me after biting me on the set of the hit 90’s sitcom, Third Rock From the Sun. Come back to finish me off?”

“John Lithgow, if there is one thing I regret in my life, it’s biting you on the set of the hit 90’s sitcom, Third Rock From the Sun. I was young; I couldn’t yet control my wolfine impulses. But you, you should know better. The orphans of this city have been showing up mangled. Mauled. Dead in the streets, John Lithgow. It’s clear that you can’t control yourself anymore. So I have to put a stop to this myself,” declared Joseph Gordon Levitt.

But Joseph Gordon Levitt cut off his protestations with a Heelside Feather Flip Nollie to the chest. As the silver board plunged into John Lithgow’s chest, Joseph Gordon Levitt felt John Lithgow’s corrupted soul slip out of his otherwise immortal body. With the beast dead, Joseph Gordon Levitt skated back to his loft in the Mission.

And for about a month everything seemed fine. Then one morning, as he listened to NPR, Joseph Gordon Levitt heard a disturbing news piece. “Still more orphans were found dead and mangled on the streets of San Francisco last night,” said a solemn Nina Totenberg. The rest of the report fell into the back of Joseph Gordon Levitt’s mind. So John Lithgow wasn’t the orphan killer! Who could it be?

With John Lithgow dead, Joseph Gordon Levitt reflected on the other werewolves that he knew. Cameron Diaz had been bitten by the recently converted John Lithgow on the set of the audio recording of Shrek, but had to be put down when she lost control during the filming of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, and Robo Cameron Diaz certainly wasn’t a werewolf. He remembered biting Julia Stiles on the set of the 1999 romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, but she was well under control - she could afford the top secret and exorbitant werewolf medication, Lupinex ®. That meant only one thing. The orphan killer was The Source, the dark figure that had bitten Joseph Gordon Levitt on the set of Angels in the Outfield.

But who was The Source? It had been a dark moonlit night, and it had been impossible to tell who his attacker was. All he knew was that one minute he had been standing in the plywood dugout set all alone, and the next he had felt the teeth of a hungry werewolf in his shoulder. When he woke up, beaten and battered, he was told how lucky he was to be alive. Now he knew how far from the truth that was.

Joseph Gordon Levitt laid low for the next couple of weeks, gathering his energy and courage, so that once the next full moon came, he would be able to do some serious sleuthing. To pass the time, he watched some reruns of Friends. He wondered idly if Courtney Cox still thought of him from time to time, and cursed the day that Tom Selleck was born. He banished those thoughts to the darkest parts of his mind, the parts that would overwhelm him with sadness if he gave them their due course.

He had a few friends over for drinks and cous cous, followed by 70’s and 80’s karaoke. He sang “She Blinded Me With Science,” in his full Thomas Dolby costume. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Christina Applegate did a spot on Ike and Tina Turner, until Dwayne got carried away pinned Christina to the floor, shouting “CAN YOU SMELL WHAT IKE IS COOKING!?” and Kid Rock had to step in and roughly escort the belligerent ex-wrestler to his limo. Overall, it was a successful party, even if Emilio Estevez never showed.

He was just cleaning up from the party, putting away the neon party hads and washing up his good silver when a ring came on his Nokia 3120 Classic. The immortal words of Dave Matthews came spilling out:

“Yes Joseph Gordon Levitt! Listen...I need you to meet me tomorrow, so we can discuss something very important, even more important than either of our esteemed careers!”

Joseph Gordon Levitt hopped on his skateboard and set out towards the Golden Gate Bridge, feeling the wind once more in his wolf fur. Everywhere he went, he sensed a fear in the sleeping city. Something was amiss in this foggy night.

He rolled up to the international monument and was treated to a grizzly sight. A mangled and contorted Danny Glover lay in a pool of moonlight and his own blood. A few feet away laid Christopher Lloyd in a similar state.

Tony Danza is the Source! thought Joseph Gordon Levitt, and he must have used Danny Glover to lure me here to set me up! Any minute now, he’ll step out of the shadows, and–

A gruff, lycanthropically tinged voice came from the shadows. “Joseph Gordon Levitt. How many years ago did I bite you on the set of Angels in the Outfield? It seems like a lifetime. What a shame that I should have to kill you now. You’ve had your share of indescretions, but this time you’ve gone too far!”

Joseph Gordon Levitt dodged Tony Danza’s first swipe, rolling sideways into a dumpster, crushing it with the considerable momentum of a rolling werewolf. He was reminded of his time studying French poetry at Columbia University in New York. Au bout du fossé, la culbute, he thought bitterly to himself.

As he was thinking bitterly to himself, he felt a claw pierce his shoulder. As a wave of pain surged through his body, Joseph Gordon Levitt twisted and thrust his own claws towards the hulking Were-Danza. He connected and felt ribs cracking beneath his fingertips.

Tony Danza let out a scream of pure hatred and pain and kicked out both of his clawed feet, sending Joseph Gordon Levitt flying thirty, maybe even thirty five feet. He lumbered over to the prone Joseph Gordon Levitt and pulled out a silver knife. As he plunged the silver knife downward, Joseph Gordon Levitt prepared for the end of the twisted nightmare he had been calling his life. A shot rang in the darkness. Tony Danza fell to the ground, dead. He looked up and saw a pistol extended from the shadows, no doubt loaded with silver bullets.

“He wasn’t the orphan killer,” came a cool female voice, “and he thought you were. He came here to find the killer, just as you did! Little did he know that it was, in fact, me! Reese Witherspoon! A vampire!”

“You see, my blood lust only increases with time, and I couldn’t have some vigilante werewolves with moral hangups trying to prevent my from getting my fill. So I lured Danny Glover and Christopher Lloyd here first. Killing them was no problem: they were old, tired and unsuspicious. But you and Tony Danza, I couldn’t risk taking you on directly, even with a silver bullet. So I pitted you against each other. Now Tony’s dead. And you will be too, in a matter of seconds. Then the blood of orphans the world over will be mine!”

She raised the gun, but just as she was about to fire, a wooden spike came plunging through her belly. She fell to the ground with an astonished look on her face. Kid Rock looked up, from his vampirish victim and ran over to Joseph Gordon Levitt.